


late to your own funeral

by CalicoCats



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Sasha begins to become part of the distortion, kind of, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-21 03:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalicoCats/pseuds/CalicoCats
Summary: Sasha hasn’t been feeling like herself, lately.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	1. missed the eulogy

**Author's Note:**

> warning for unreality and being replaced + brief mention of trypophobia.

Sasha James died with a scream.

It is not her scream. She is frozen in place, but Jane Prentiss is free to scream her hole ridden lungs out.

No, Sasha James died when a figure in artifact storage displaced her and put itself in her role. The scream just gave it the cover to do so.

It is a crude mockery, but even Sasha now recognized this imposter as the new Sasha James. It is as if an understudy Sasha was never aware of took over her position, just because it could.

So, Sasha James died, and her murderer, who is not and yet is Sasha James, stepped in to fill the gap.

If Sasha wasn’t frozen by the process, she would’ve been insulted that her replacement was, essentially, a table. 

Murdered by a table. She could’ve laughed.

Someone took it upon themselves to laugh for her, and a yellow door with faded, peeling paint, opened under Sasha’s feet. 

The New Sasha James had no reason to chase after her, it had taken Sasha’s name. It had taken Sasha’s position, and Sasha knew this as much as she knew anything. Given the twisting halls she’d fallen into, that was not saying a lot.

Fallen into... wasn’t exactly right. Sasha was falling through the vertical halls, although which wall was the floor was unclear. Everything was unclear, when Sasha thought about it. She was unclear. 

This is where Sasha screamed, free from the terror that had glued her in place in artifact storage and immersed in the new, novel terror of having no place in a world she wasn’t sure she’d ever end up back in.

Sasha had dropped her tape recorder up in artifact storage, but a click sounds from her hand and she found herself gripping another one she hadn’t picked up.

Eventually, Sasha finds the floor. Or, the floor finds Sasha. It must have been on break, but whether or not floors get lunch breaks is not currently Sasha’s priority. It will have to take a backseat to finding a way out.

Sasha might be dead, but she would rather not be late to her own funeral. Whether her coworkers are aware of it or not.

She wasn’t really Sasha anymore. Sasha James was up in the institute, presumably facing a sea of worms. 

But she liked the name Sasha. She could borrow it for the time being. 


	2. ok but where are the worms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha is very confused but that’s kind of the point of this all.

Sasha had never had a particularly strong opinion on hallways, but she’s beginning to think she dislikes them. How they turn and twist and show reflections in mirrors of people you aren’t and won’t be. The people you should be. Of herself.

And then there was that laugh. The laugh that drifted down the halls and brushed off the corridors. She knew now that it was Michael, and of course it was, and that this was his... domain? house? She felt a little bad about intruding on the hell scape that was Michael’s home decor, but couldn’t bring herself to care too much, considering she still needed to leave wherever she was.

Michael makes himself known, eventually. While the first, and only, time they’d met Michael looked nearly human, here it looked like he had stood in front of a funhouse mirror, liked the way his reflection looked, and decided to make that his regular appearance. His hair curled into itself, and she could not see where any of the locks ended. His height would have made it seem like he was standing on stilts, but his legs had just... stretched? Extended? The smile he wore wasn’t malicious, but was distinctly out of place. Like it was taken out of storage for a very specific occasion.

He kept up with her pace without taking a step. “Hello, assistant,” he said, and his voice twisted around itself in a loop.

The conversation after was awkward but Sasha was, in a way, relieved to have company. Even if her company was a debatably trustworthy monster with very sharp hands. 

Sasha curtly thanked him for the tips with the worms, and apologized for intruding in his home (?). She did not want to listen to her own voice longer than she needed to, worried about possibly hearing it layer over itself.

If it did echo, Michael didn’t seem to notice. Neither did he acknowledge her thanks. He told her that this was not his home, but that it was him. That he was like an extension, a hand, of a grander being. Not his own, old “self.” He sounded disgusted at the thought of being like himself. Like Michael.

Sasha wasn’t quite like that. She was aware she wasn’t entirely Sasha, but she wasn’t entirely not Sasha either. She wasn’t entirely like Michael.

Michael made one last comment about archival assistants always getting lost. Then Sasha blinked, and in the place of her companion was a laugh that stretched its way through this odd pocket dimension and the outdated wallpaper that lined the hall.

The hall that looked like it went on as far as she walked, with a tacky carpet that’s pattern changed every time Sasha tried to look too closely at it. 

Sasha was supposed to be more worried about all this, she knew, but she’d had a very long day and had relatively recently gone through a supernatural version of identity theft. Most of her fear had been burnt out, and she was left with the ashes of concern and resignation. 

The monotony of walking through the hallway was almost comforting at this point, and she was so used to it that she almost walked straight into — oh. That was new.

There was a yellow door directly in front of her, and Sasha needs to take a step back to get a proper look at it. The door is in the shape of a trapezoid more than a rectangle, and there is a tag hanging on the handle that reads “Do Not Disturb.”

Tentatively turning the handle revealed the door was locked. Sasha took another look at the “Do Not Disturb” tag and took it off the handle, hanging it around her own wrist. She’d had enough paranormal experiences to last the rest of her almost life, and she would have really preferred to not have to deal with much more right now. 

Michael had rematerialized, took a look at the tag, and just told her to give the archivist his regards. Whether those regards were supposed to be pleasant or not Sasha could not tell. Before she could ask, Michael had slipped away again with a laugh. Jon would have to deal with lukewarm regards.

Sasha tried the handle again. It was unlocked.

Her first step back into somewhere other than the halls and Sasha was hit by such a wave of disorientation she had to lean on the door frame. 

However long she had walked those halls they had left her used to their perpetual disorganization, so it a place that wasn’t nonsensical was just a lot to process. Her dizziness passed, but she hadn’t remembered closing the door behind her.

Her hands looked normal enough, no claws fastened at the ends. Sasha let herself drop some of the tension in her shoulders. 

Sasha turned to the room and found herself in the storage room turned impromptu guest room. It looked too neat, considering Martin had been living there for.. for at least a month. Yes, at least a month.

The cot looked hastily made, like someone had been there recently and just barely remembered to make the bed before they left, but the rest of the room looked like it hadn’t been touched in what, days? Weeks? Had it been invaded by the worms too, or had it been spared from the infestation?

She needed to find Martin, ask him what was going on. He would be at his desk, probably. Definitely. 

Or he could have be eaten by worms. The whole archives had to deal with worms while she was walking through halls and getting her identity stolen like she had all the time in the world.

Sasha felt her previously repressed panic coming back tenfold, and she was an unsuspecting bystander unprepared to deal with that tidal wave.

It took time to get herself to leave the room, to calm down. She did not know how much because she felt like she was being reintroduced to the feeling of time passing. She did not know if she liked it. 

The door opened into a hall. Not a particularly interesting one, just a normal hall in the archives. No worms. Just a normal hall in a normal job where people don’t get eaten by worms. Get yourself together, Sasha.

She was now as composed as she would be and ready to find Martin. And potentially her last name. She missed that, too.

But first she will go to the break room, because she hasn’t eaten in a while and g-d is it noticeable now when she isn’t numbed by the day’s events.

Is there still that brand of tea that she likes? Did everyone make it out of the worm fiasco alright or all they all gone and she’s the last one not really standing? Did Jon restock those biscuits Tim asked for?

Lost in thought, she bumped into someone else, and they both stumbled in their hurry to apologize. 

Sasha recognized who she bumped though. Wasn’t this the person who ran that one ghost hunting thing? 

Melanie, right. Melanie. What was Melanie doing down here, and where were the worms, and was Melanie waiting for Jon? Was Sasha in the way?

But Melanie stared at Sasha like she was seeing a ghost, and not one Melanie would have documented on her show. Sasha wasn’t sure she could prove she wasn’t a ghost, in all honesty.

Sasha was under Melanie’s gaze, but something else had its attention on her, and it only increased when Melanie said, very carefully, “Sasha?”

A tape recorder clicked on. The one in Sasha’s grip was already running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter works as a stand-alone but i wanted to finish writing this bit out.


	3. note to self: avoid jane’s ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha and the other assistants get caught up

Catching up on the Archive gossip left Sasha more exhausted and confused thanthe hallways had. 

Melanie King, newest addition to the archival team, seemed to be the only one who recognized Sasha. Sasha prime, anyway, because her murderer had been working in her place for months. 

Melanie seemed under the impression that there were two, separate Sasha’s. Melanie did not realize that Sasha had her name stolen and her role stolen and that she was only now aware of how long it had been. How long she had been dead and not dead, and even now that she had pulled herself out of purgatory she felt she still had one foot in the grave.

Months. Months after the worms and Prentiss and the table and—

It was not the time to dwell on that if she didn’t want to give herself a worse headache. She was Sasha enough to count. She had borrowed the name and she intended to hold onto it.

Melanie, for all she didn’t understand about the dangers of this new job, believed Sasha was, well, Sasha. That was more than Sasha could say for anyone else, and Melanie genuinely seemed like she wanted to know where Sasha had gone.

Given, Melanie didn’t know Sasha hadn’t just quit or took a long extended vacation rather than perusing long hallways after being attacked by a table being. 

Sasha preferred easing into to the topic of her months long identity crisis with some small talk first.

Martin wormed his way into their conversation on his way to the break room, probably to make tea, after inquiring if Sasha was here to make a statement. 

It took a moment for Sasha to remember why’d she’d been looking for Martin in the first place, and when it struck her she blurted out: “Worms?”

Martin looked puzzled and slowly echoed, “Worms?”

Sasha took a moment to compose herself, “What happened with the worms? In the archives? Did— did you all make it out alright?” I don’t think I did, really, Sasha didn’t add.

Martin looked at her with suspicion, his politely friendly demeanor shifting into something more guarded, “Why do you—“

Melanie, more than a little tired of whatever was going on, butted in, “This’s Sasha, we haven’t seen each other since...?”

“The worms,” Sasha said.

“Since before the worms.”

Martin looked more tired than Sasha remembered, and this conversation only seemed to be draining him further. He sighed, seemed collect himself, then said, “Should— we should sit down for this,”

And that led to an impromptu original archival assistants meeting on the break room table, complete with tea and the persistent feeling of something eavesdropping. And Tim. 

Tim, who wasn’t entirely convinced about Sasha but who took Melanie’s word for the moment. Whose face had scars that looked far too much like Prentiss’s.

Sasha’s headache — migraine, was building, but so was the need to know what she’d missed.

The worms and Prentiss were the only ones who’d died during their attack, barring Sasha, although Jon and Tim did not escape unscathed. Prentiss’s ashes were somewhere in Jon’s office, courtesy of Martin. 

It seemed the almost-flirting-but-not-quite between Martin and Jon hadn’t changed, weird as giving your crush a jar of ashes from the worm woman who wanted to destroy your workplace was.

Speaking of Jon, he had been... tense after Gertrude’s corpse was discovered in the archive’s tunnels with three bullet wounds. And he was now on the run for a supposed murder. Potentially two supposed murders. Sasha wasn’t sure if the second murder was Gertrude’s or her own. 

“Our Jon is a murderer? Looks like the wind could knock him over Jon?” Sasha asked, taking a sip of her now cold tea.

Martin looked uneasy, “Well, there’s no way to know for sure—“

“That’s the Jon,” Tim interjected. 

Melanie had left after Tim showed, something about needing to research into a statement. He’d grown more distant from the last time Sasha had seen him. 

Tim and Martin had also had an encounter with Michael’s winding halls, and Sasha had used that to explain where’d she’d escaped to during Prentiss’s infestation. 

It wasn’t a statement, there was no way to take the nonsense of the hallways and thread them into a coherent narrative. Tim and Martin, although wary, seemed to accept her story.

She hadn’t mentioned the table, or her replacement, but she knew that her coworkers didn’t recognize her.

She instinctively knew that, besides Melanie, no one would recognize her. She was tied to no identity, even with the false Sasha gone. If she looked at her reflection, would her face look like a stranger’s? Would she accept the false understudy as her true reflection?

Martin was kind enough to offer up the room he’d used in the archives to Sasha, and it was then that Sasha realized she likely had no apartment to go back to after how long she’d been gone.

Sasha made sure to avoid her reflection on her way to her new room. She placed the do not disturb tag on the door knob that faced towards the room, as if it could keep the rest of the horrors of London away from her room.

It wouldn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story is ending up sadder than i intended but it’s not going to stay that way if I have anything to say about it

**Author's Note:**

> a sasha live thing! kind of! it’s meant to be multi chapter but i don’t know if ill get that far. we’ll see


End file.
